You can certainly tell it is a Saturday because there are fishing boats everywhere. The clouds from yesterday's rain have lifted and the skies are bright blue. The mountains are so beautiful and on both sides of the river, the view is absolutely amazing. Within an hour of getting thru Nickajack Lock, we leave Tennessee and go into Alabama.
This 1,000 foot power plant is TVA's Widow Creek power plant and is one of the tallest structures in the Tennessee Valley region. It is a beautiful sight to see on the river.
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| TVA Widow Creek Power Plant |
We then see a CSX Railroad bridge -- and as luck would have it, a train comes across the bridge as we approach the bridge on the River. It was a very cool sight to see -- and the train Conductor blew his horn at us as we stopped to watch the train go over the train tracks.
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| CSX Railway Over Tennessee River |
We then travel another 34 miles on Lake Guntersville to our next marina and by 3:20 Saturday afternoon, we arrive at Goose Pond Marina. The farther we get away from Chattanooga, the shorter the mountains get, but they are still very impressive and are on both sides of the river.
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Gene and I are having the best time of our lives on this 8-week trip along the Tennessee River. We like to kid each other and make each other laugh -- I took a picture of him who was taking a picture of me!!
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| Kathy Taking a Picture of Gene Taking a Picture..... |
As we always do, we keep checking the weather to see if we need to stay an extra day or more because of heavy rain. We can certainly handle rain showers, but torrential rain is something we want to avoid - especially since we are not on a deadline. The weather forecast starting Sunday was for heavy rains in SW Tennessee and northern Alabama -- exactly where we are located and where we are going. So we decide to stay here at this marina where we are in a covered slip to see what happens with the heavy rains. It is now Wednesday afternoon, and it has rained non-stop for 2 days with over 3.5 inches of rain on Guntersville Lake in Scottsboro, AL. The saving grace we have at this marina is that we have a friend that has a boat here and he has graciously offered his car to us to run errands, go to the grocery and do laundry. We've spent a lot of time cleaning, decluttering, and rearranging things inside the boat and also our boat cleaning supplies. We have had a lot of time on our hands to get things done. I've even cooked up a few things for us to eat over the next few days.
Also in the Scottsboro, AL area is an Unclaimed Baggage Center where this store buys unclaimed baggage from airlines. There is everything from luggage, laptops, ipads, clothes, shoes, jewelry....anything you can think of that someone may have packed in their luggage is sold in this store. This store is kinda overwhelming, and you'd need a lot of time to sift through things to find something you may need. It is a store you could visit every day since they have thousands of items arriving daily. We spent about 2 hours looking around and Gene found a couple of things he "needed".
On Sunday afternoon, the ominous clouds are forming at Goose Pond Marina near sunset -- lots of rain is on its way.
And this is the full moon coming up over the river on Tuesday night after we had returned from dinner. Within 15 minutes the clouds had covered the moon and hard rain had set in for the night and all day on Wednesday. We had more than 3" of rain today so we stayed put in a covered slip.
We are hoping the heavy rains will slow down enough for us to leave Goose Pond Marina on Thursday and head to Ditto Marina in Huntsville for the night. Once we arrive in Huntsville, we will be half way home.
We are ready to get going again.
Love my Captain....Love Cloud Nine....
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